ABSTRACT
The European Community (EC) is probably the most criticized institution in the modern world. If its critics are to be believed, the EC’s bloated bureaucracy works at a pace falling somewhat short of that of a snail; its policy-makers, cocooned from the unpleasantness of the real world in their luxurious Brussels offices, are incapable of devising a proposal even remotely relevant to the continent’s burgeoning economic, social and environmental problems, while politicians of all allegiances and nationalities, ever faithful to the deep-rooted mistrust between Western Europe’s patchwork of states, look upon the very idea of consensus on any pressing issue as they would a particularly nasty disease.
